Many of my children have been religiously educated in the right way, have been made to think of God as their creator, benefactor, and preserver, and the author of all the beauties of nature that they see, and the powers they possess. When I say "we must return good for evil as Christ did, who was the most perfect being that ever lived," they understand me as speaking of a principle which they can apply directly to themselves; for I often add, "Christ said things when he was very young that showed he understood all about right and wrong, and in those years of his life which we are not told anything about in the Bible, he must always have obeyed his conscience, or he never could have preached to others as he did afterwards,"—for the only vital use of Christ's life to others is to make his spirit of action our own, and to believe that we can do likewise.
I have been led to think much of this in relation to children, by hearing my orthodox friend talk; for he is a very conscientious man, and his admission that to address the child's conscience was the noblest way of treating it, though not the canonical one, let in a world of light upon me touching the unchristian condition of Christendom. How can truth prevail where the noblest appeal is not considered the religious appeal? Truly yours,
M.
LETTER V.
My dear Anna,—If you wish to know the practical difficulties that arise out of my desire to inculcate self-government, and to keep my own out of sight as much as possible, I will tell you candidly that liberty is sometimes abused in my school; but I have never repented of my principles, and have learned not to be frightened by apparent failures, for I have never known an instance, where I have had an opportunity to observe the result, in which my plan has not answered somewhat to my hopes.
And now I must tell you what are my hopes. They are not to make men and women of children, or to produce perfect consistency of action in youth. They are to put the mind in the right attitude so that the education of life will bring forth the character harmoniously; and to make truth, sincerity, kindly affections, and a conscientious use of the powers of the mind the prevailing characteristics. Sometimes I wait long for the dawning of this hope, but I cannot despair of it as long as I believe in the soul. I do not mean that I think the soul self-existent, independent of God, but I believe it so created that it can right itself at last with due effort to realize His presence in vital laws. To induce it to make this effort is what education is designed to effect, is it not? I have had some children under my care who have come to me deceitful, perverse, without delicacy of sensibility, self-conceited, puffed up with lofty notions of their own importance and that of all who belonged to them; and these characteristics so prominent and offensive that our intercourse was for a long time nothing but war. I had no opportunity to express approbation or sympathy, for the object with them was to defy or circumvent me, and to accomplish their lessons by trickery instead of honest application. These faults were constantly recurring, and I was often strongly tempted to rid myself of the difficulty by declining to keep such scholars in school with others. If my operations had necessarily been confined to one apartment, I should have been obliged to do this sometimes, but in my father's house I had many facilities, and I felt it my duty, if possible, to do what I could for such unfortunate children, as long as I was sure that my influence, and not theirs, prevailed in the school. I saw that vices were made apparent, of whose existence I could have wished innocent children never to know, but I knew it was impossible to sequester them wholly from such contact, and perhaps it had better be under supervision and thus possibly turned to account. Sometimes the beauty of virtue is better seen by being contrasted with its opposite. Had not I a right to think the evil might be overruled for good, since God permits evil (the negative of good) in his world? To do this, however, requires the greatest vigilance, and occasionally I have been obliged to suspend very much the intellectual training of a school, to gain time to investigate its moral state, and the degree of evil influence that might tend to counteract mine, for these interlopers among the innocents sometimes had bright parts, and an activity that never tired. The faults of such children often brought them into direct collision with their companions whose peace they invaded, and thus far I was aided by my scholars in my discipline, though I have had cases where the outward speciousness was only such as one would imagine to belong to a matured person. I was obliged to take the greatest pains, however, in order not to destroy the very germ of delicacy (which yet bore no fruits), that my admonitions should be in private, whenever no overt acts made it necessary for me to speak before others. In private I need not speak in measured terms.
It is frightful to feel one's self so directly in contact with the wrong-doing of a fellow-being, but at such times I have laid open the heart as well as I was able, and showed the characteristics in all their hideousness, taking it for granted that the moral judgment was still alive.
A great man once said to me that we had no second consciousness by which we could judge ourselves; and Burns, you know, exclaims,—
"O wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!"
but I agree neither with the philosopher nor the poet, for conscience is that second consciousness, which can be evoked if only the right conjurer speaks. I believe in no other safeguard than that "voice of God within us" to which I firmly believe no human being is always deaf. But, dear A——, what is so revolting as a bad child? It seems an anomaly in nature. I depict no imaginary characters to you. I do not think I could imagine a bad child. It must be seen and known to be believed in. I am always inclined to blame the environment of such a child, but repeated instances that I have known convince me that souls differ in quality, and that it is unreasonable to expect the loveliest type of virtue in all. I believe in the remedial power of education, not that it can change the quality of the soul, but the character of the individual. A bold, free spirit will not by education be made delicate, but its boldness may be employed on worthy objects, and so of other traits. Truth too can be shown to be beautiful to some, but to others to be only manly, or respectable.